He seems to suspect this scheme of being chimerical. "Yet
why," says he, "should not personal quarrels be submitted to judges,
as well as questions of possession? and why should not a congress be
appointed for the general good of mankind, as well as for so many
purposes of less importance?"
He declares himself with great ardour against the use of torture, and
by some misinformation charges the English that they still retain it.
It is, perhaps, impossible to review the laws of any country without
discovering many defects and many superfluities. Laws often continue,
when their reasons have ceased. Laws made for the first state of the
society continue unabolished, when the general form of life is
changed. Parts of the judicial procedure, which were, at first, only
accidental, become, in time, essential; and formalities are
accumulated on each other, till the art of litigation requires more
study than the discovery of right.
The king of Prussia, examining the institutions of his own country,
thought them such as could only be amended by a general abrogation,
and the establishment of a new body of law, to which he gave the name
of the Code Frederique, which is comprised in one volume of no great
bulk, and must, therefore, unavoidably contain general positions to be
accommodated to particular cases by the wisdom and integrity of the
courts.
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